July 10, 2015

Engineers at Harvard University and the University of California, San Diego, have created the first robot with a 3D-printed body that transitions from a rigid core to a soft exterior. The robot is capable of more than 30 untethered jumps at a time and is powered by a mix of butane and oxygen.

The researchers describe the robot’s design, manufacturing and testing in the July… read more

July 10, 2015

In Self/Less, a science-fiction thriller to be released in the U.S. today, July 10, 2015, Damian Hale, an extremely wealthy aristocrat (Ben Kingsley) dying from cancer, undergoes a $250 million radical medical procedure at a lab called Phoenix Biogenic in Manhattan to have his consciousness transferred into the body of a healthy young man (Ryan Reynolds).… read more

July 10, 2015

Duke University neuroscientists have created a network called “Brainet” that uses signals from an array of electrodes implanted in the brains of multiple rodents in experiments to merge their collective brain activity and jointly control a virtual avatar arm or even perform sophisticated computations — including image pattern recognition and even weather forecasting.

July 9, 2015

University of California, Berkeley, physicists have used graphene to build lightweight ultrasonic loudspeakers and microphones, enabling people to mimic bats or dolphins’ ability to use sound to communicate and gauge the distance and speed of objects around them.

More practically, the wireless ultrasound devices complement standard radio transmission using electromagnetic waves in areas where radio is impractical, such as underwater, but with far greater fidelity than current ultrasound or sonar… read more

Crowdsourcing brain data with hundreds of adults could be a new frontier in neuroscience and could lead to new insights about the brain

July 9, 2015

In a large-scale art-science installation called My Virtual Dream in Toronto in 2013, more than 500 adults wearing a Muse wireless electroencephalography (EEG) headband inside a 60-foot geodesic dom participated in an unusual neuroscience experiment.

As they played a collective neurofeedback computer game where they were required to manipulate their mental states of relaxation and concentration, the group’s collective EEG signals triggered a catalog of… read more

One of the first devices to use the unique electronic and optical properties of graphene for a practical application

July 9, 2015

European scientists have harnessed graphene’s unique optical and electronic properties to develop a highly sensitive sensor to detect molecules such as proteins and drugs — one of the first such applications of graphene.

The results are described in an article appearing in the latest edition of the journal Science.

The researchers at EPFL’s Bionanophotonic Systems Laboratory (BIOS) and the Institute of Photonic Sciences (ICFO, Spain) used graphene to improve… read more

July 8, 2015

A group of researchers at KAIST in Korea has developed a wireless-power transfer (WPT) technology that allows mobile devices in the “Wi-Power” zone (within 0.5 meters from the power source) to be charged at any location and in any direction and orientation, tether-free.

The WPT system is capable of charging 30 smartphones with a power capacity of one watt each or 5 laptops with 2.4 watts.

July 8, 2015

A team of astronomers and computer scientists at the University of Hertfordshire have taught a machine to “see” astronomical images, using data from the Hubble Space Telescope Frontier Fields set of images of distant clusters of galaxies that contain several different types of galaxies.

July 8, 2015

An unusual material called “black phosphorus” could emerge as a strong candidate for future energy-efficient transistors, new research from McGill University and Université de Montréal suggests. The material is a form of phosphorus that is similar to graphite (also known as pencil lead and the source of graphene), so it can be exfoliated (separated) easily into single atomic layers known as phosphorene.… read more

July 7, 2015

Electrical engineers at the University of California, San Diego have developed a new design for a cloaking device that overcomes some of the limitations of existing “invisibility cloaks”: it’s both thin and does not alter the brightness of light around a hidden object.

The technology behind this cloak will have more applications than just invisibility, such as concentrating solar energy and increasing signal speed in optical communications.… read more

Opens up highly sensitive electric-potential-field sensing of biomolecules and semiconductor materials, for example

July 7, 2015

Using a single molecule attached to an atomic force microscope (AFM) as a more sensitive sensor, scientists in Forschungszentrum Jülich in Germany have used a new “scanning quantum dot microscopy” method to image electric potential fields (voltages) of electron shells of single molecules and even atoms with high precision for the first time, providing contact-free information on the distribution of charges.

July 7, 2015

Smartphones distracted students from school-related tasks in self-reported results of a one-year study of first-time smartphone users at a major research university in Texas.

“Smartphone technology is penetrating world markets and becoming abundant in most college settings,” said Philip Kortum, assistant professor of psychology at Rice and the study’s co-author. “We were interested to see how students with no prior experience using smartphones thought [smartphones] impacted their education.”

Researchers observe and control light wakes for the first time; could lead to new optical discoveries such as plasmonic holograms

July 6, 2015

Harvard researchers have created surface plasmons (wakes of light-like waves moving on a metallic surface) and demonstrated that they can be controlled and steered. Their demonstration was based on the Cherenkov effect, in which a charged particle moving with a velocity faster than the phase velocity of light in the medium radiates light that forms a cone with a half angle determined by the ratio of… read more

July 6, 2015

MIT spinoff Microchips Biotech has partnered with Teva Pharmaceutical, the world’s largest producer of generic drugs, to commercialize its wirelessly controlled, implantable, microchip-based devices that store and release drugs inside the body over a period of years.

Invented by Microchips Biotech co-founders Michael Cima, the David H. Koch Professor of Engineering, and Robert Langer, the David H. Koch Institute Professor, the… read more